


Inside I am a Raging Wild Fire

by earthinmywindow



Series: Dream Runners [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Attempted Sexual Assault, Family Dynamics, Multi, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthinmywindow/pseuds/earthinmywindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bertolt Hoover can feel Reiner and Annie starting to slip away from him. They have bright futures ahead while he is trapped by a legacy of violence and lies. The last thing he wants is to be their downfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside I am a Raging Wild Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Part 3 of Dream Runners. The darkest part yet. I don't know if anybody noticed, but the titles in this series all come from works by the street artist Morley, who happens to be a favorite of mine. I've slipped in at least two other references to his works in this series. Also, fans of the CLAMP series X might find something familiar in here.
> 
> Oh yeah, and I let slip the state where they live. Surprise, it's the same state where I live!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who reads this or anything I write. I hope you do enjoy it.

Bertolt Hoover awoke on the crest of a ragged gasp, skin lathered with sweat, heart beating like fists from the inside of a trunk. Nothing out of the ordinary. A thick tarp nailed over the only window kept his bedroom in near blackness at all hours, but he discerned from tactile cues that one foot was on his pillow, where his head should be, and his head, as well as an arm, were lolling off the side of the bed onto the floor. This tendency to thrash in his sleep was one of two reasons Bertolt’s bed was just a mattress with no frame. The other reason, far more embarrassing, was poverty.  
  
Even from his skewed vantage point, he could read the time on his clock-radio clearly. It was 6:20AM, ten minutes before the alarm was set to wake him. He switched it off preemptively, levered himself to a sit, and with a sigh staggered up onto legs still clumsy from nocturnal disuse. Fortunately, his bedroom had no furnishings other than the mattress and a plethora of used books he kept in neat, tall towers against the walls, so he was able to navigate to the light switch without injury or mishap. He flicked on the overhead lamp and immediately winced at harshness of too much radiance, too fast, but very quickly acclimated.  
  
Keeping with the austerity of the rest of the room, the eggshell white walls were bare except for a single calendar, which featured photos of giraffes for each month—Reiner’s idea of a hilarious gag gift. Today was circled in red sharpie. He’d been waiting for this day—March 22nd, 2014—for weeks.  
  
Yawning, he stretched awkwardly long arms behind his head and arched his spine until his shoulder blades each released a delicious pop. He wished he weren’t so tired this morning, but it couldn’t be helped; his sleep last night had been particularly inadequate.  
  
One of Bertolt Hoover’s few talents—if he could even get away with calling it such—was that he could fall asleep just about anywhere, no matter what position his body was bent, curled, or slumped. The tradeoff—because even worthless talents came at a cost—was that the sleep he got was hardly deep, rarely continuous, and never wholly satisfying. Bertolt drifted on the surface of sleep like a buoy without ever sinking to the abyssal, benthic realms where dreams and true rest dwelt. Most nights—and some nights more than once—he would wake up as he had just now, panting and sweating and tachycardic. All it took was a noise outside his bedroom, a shadow moving over his eyelids. When you’re only half asleep, your other half is always awake, always alert, always waiting.  
  
The architecture of his sleep was set at a very young age, born of necessity. At any time of any night, four-year old Bertolt might have had to scurry into the crawlspace behind his bed, where he would scrunch into a ball and cover his ears with small fists and try not to make any sound that might alert his father to his presence. Of course, Bertolt knew that it didn’t really matter how well he hid or how quiet he was if Dad was in the right mood—If that man’s anger wasn’t slaked after he finished beating on Ma, he _would_ find his son.  
  
Twelve years had passed since he and Ma escaped from that hell and Bertolt still couldn’t get a decent night of sleep. At this point he figured he never would and tried to just make the best of it. What he needed right now was coffee.  
  
Ma was passed out on the sofa, her face resting uncomfortably close to one of the many patches where the fabric had worn through, exposing innards of sharp iron springs and flammable foam lining. Bertolt picked up her jacket from the floor, folded it, and gingerly lifted her head to slide it under. She stirred, grumbled. “Bertie, that you?”  
  
“Yeah, Ma,” he said. “I’m about to make coffee, do you want any?”  
  
Her initial reply was just a grunt from the place where her nose joined her throat. She sat up and ground her fingertips against her closed eyes, blending the leftover makeup into muddy gray daubs on her sallow skin. “Yeah, I could drink some coffee,” she finally said. She was still dressed in the nicotine laced clothes she’d worn to work last night, a job she had amazingly kept for three whole months now. Her dark curls were tangled into cloud that appeared more to be floating around her head than growing out of it.  
  
Bertolt felt a great upwelling of pity and headed to the kitchen to make the coffee. He changed the filter, scooped in the grounds, poured in the tap water, and held down the start button for three and a half seconds, which was the minimum time necessary to get the thing to actually work. With a weakhearted shudder, it started to brew.  
  
A tang of tobacco wafted from the living room, indicating that Mom had already lit her first cigarette of the day. “Bertie,” she hollered over the burbling of the coffee maker. “I can’t find my ashtray. Bring me a bowl, would ya?”  
  
There was only one clean bowl in the cupboard, but Bertolt took it to her—he would have to wash dishes tonight anyway. He set it on the end table and felt his mother’s withering gaze on the side of his face. “Would you like me to make you something for breakfast?” he asked, hoping to deflect her disparagement before she offered it. “Toast? Eggs?”  
  
Glowering, she took another long drag off her cigarette, crushed out the butt on the bottom of the bowl, and then answered. “Naw, just the coffee. You working tonight, boy?”  
  
“No,” Bertolt said. “I have tonight off. But I’m going to dinner with Reiner and Annie. It’s Annie’s birthday today. I told you this, Ma.”  
  
Her frown deepened. “I don’t remember you telling me.” She paused to put another cigarette in her mouth and continued speaking around it as she flicked the ignitor of a pocket lighter. “How come those Leonhart kids are the only friends you hang out with, Bertie? Are you banging that girl?”  
  
“What? No!” Blood rushed into his face and perspiration oozed out. He was embarrassed by his mother’s crassness even with nobody else there to hear it. “Annie and I are friends. I would never...” His voice trailed off as he didn’t actually know how to end the sentence. He would never... _what?_ Date Annie? Kiss Annie? Make love to Annie? Only because she showed no sign of wanting him that way. If she did want him... His pores released more sweat as his imagination crept too close to a dangerous place.  
  
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Ma said scathingly. “You’re just a pathetic pansy, that’s what you are. Course she always seemed like a dyke to me. Or maybe just frigid.” Her eyes on him narrowed to slits, a look of utter disgust. “You aren’t banging the boy, are you? Or I suppose you’d be the one letting him bang you, strong guy like that with a skinny faggot like you.”  
  
“Ma _please_ ,” Bertolt said, his voice reedy with the effort to not show his exasperation. “Annie and Reiner are both just my friends. I don’t have time to date anyone, what with school and my job. Now, I think the coffee is done. I’ll bring you a cup.”  
  
“Don’t forget the Irish,” she called hoarsely after him. Her broad definition of the term “Irish” was not restricted to just whiskey, encompassing pretty much anything 70 proof or higher.  
  
Bertolt rinsed out two coffee mugs and filled them both two-thirds. Then he looked for some booze. There was a mostly full bottle of bourbon next to the microwave and he added a splash to Ma’s mug, probably less than she wanted. He hesitated over his own mug. It was an occasional habit of his, not something he did every day—usually only when he anticipated a particularly stressful situation. Not today, he decided, and retrieved the carton of milk from the fridge to use instead. He didn’t want to be faded for any part of Annie’s birthday.  
  
“Here you go, Ma,” he said, depositing her mug in her hands. He gulped his down quickly—even with the addition of the milk it scalded the inside of his mouth—and then went back to his room to get ready for school, glad to escape her presence.  
  
He would take a thorough shower after school, before going out with Reiner and Annie, so for now he just washed his face and brushed his teeth and tamed his cowlicks with a wetted comb. All of his clothes looked like crap—ill-fitting, falling apart, or both—and singled him out as a poor kid at school, but he couldn’t spend his hard earned money on something as frivolous as fashion when he didn’t even have a car. For now, Good Will and Salvation Army would have to suffice. He put on a pair of jeans with holes in both knees and a t-shirt that had probably once been black but was now a fuzzy slate gray.  
  
“I’ll stop back here for a shower after school,” he told Ma on his way out. “You probably won’t be here, but I’m giving you a heads up.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re welcome for the hot water,” she said. “Enjoy it while you can, boy. Just remember, after you graduate, you’re out on your ass. No more mooching offa me.”  
  
Bertolt had been moving towards the door to leave as she spoke and she’d loudened her voice to follow him, so that by the end she was shouting at him. When he opened the door and found Annie and Reiner already waiting in the hall he was certain they had heard most of what Ma had said. But they would never say anything about it; it was part of their own little unofficial don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. Years ago, when the friendship was still just a soft and greenish bud of a thing, Reiner had asked him why he didn’t ever stand up to his mother and defend himself. Bertolt had been vague in his reply, said it was complicated and that nobody understood what she had been through. Reiner never brought it up again.  
  
“Hey Bertl,” Reiner greeted, flashing a mouth full of perfect, square white teeth. “Shall we get this show on the road?”  
  
“Yeah, let’s go,” Bertolt replied.  
  
He walked beside Annie down the hallway, adjusting and readjusting his gait to match her pace, while Reiner took the vanguard position. Annie had always been short and Bertolt had always been tall, but his latest—hopefully last—growth spurt had stretched their height disparity to fifteen and a half inches and he felt like a Brobdingnagian next to her. She wasn’t wearing anything special for her birthday, like a new dress or makeup, just her usual jeans and a hoodie. He liked that about her, that she was always just herself, Annie without embellishment, no matter what the day was. Of course, he also would have liked seeing her dressed up. He just liked her.  
  
Once they were inside the elevator heading down to the parking garage, he found a comfortable opening to speak to her. Not that he was shy, especially not around a girl he’d been friends with for nine years, but he was circumspect with his words. “So Annie, I guess now I can finally say it: Happy...”  
  
She raised a hand in front of his face to silence him mid-sentence. “Advance warning: If the next words out of your mouth are Sweet Sixteen, I will knock you ass-over-teakettle as soon as we are out of this elevator.”  
  
Reiner laughed. “She’s not kidding, Bertl. She can even flip me.”  
  
Bertolt rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I, uh, I was going to say Birthday, actually. But I won’t now.”  
  
One corner of Annie’s mouth quirked up as her bright, clear eyes appraised him. “Well, that’s somewhat less egregious, I guess. But I still think you are making the right move in aborting the attempted sentiment altogether.” They stepped out of the elevator and started walking. “Oh yeah,” she added when they’d reached the old blue Toyota that had once been Mrs. Leonhart’s and now was Reiner’s. “I almost forgot. I have something for your, Bertl.” She unzipped a pocket of her backpack and retrieved a paperback book, which she handed to Bertolt. “Here you go. Thou art God.”  
  
“You read it,” he said. He couldn’t help smiling as he clutched the worn, yellowed copy of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ in both hands. The cover had fallen off while it was in Annie’s custody and she had tucked it in the middle of the book, but Bertolt didn’t care about that.  
  
“You thought I wouldn’t?” Annie asked as she ducked into the backseat of the car—it was an unstated rule of Reiner’s that age determined seating in his vehicle so Bertolt always rode shotgun. “Unlike _some_ people, my literary palate extends beyond the various misadventures of the Uncanny X-Men.”  
  
“Hey!” Reiner said. “If you’re gonna badmouth my X-Men, I won’t let you borrow them anymore. Wolverine is a badass and you know it. Now buckle up, sis.”  
  
Annie rolled her eyes but she did buckle her seatbelt. “Yes, yes, Wolverine is a badass. He’s the deadliest fictional Canadian of all time. Please note that I never said I didn’t like the X-men, merely that I also enjoy books that aren’t comics. Oh, I’m sorry, _graphic novels_.”  
  
She’d loaded her words with mocking but Reiner didn’t take the bait. It was all too obvious that Annie was trying to ensnare him in a battle of wits that she would undoubtably win and he apparently wouldn’t indulge her just because it was her birthday.  
  
“So what did you think of the book?” Bertolt asked, taking advantage of the sibling ceasefire. He turned around in the passenger seat so he could look at her. Opportunities like this made him secretly grateful that their apartment building was at the far end of a oddly cut district and it took a ten-minute drive to get to their school.  
  
“It has some interesting points to make,” she said dryly. “Heinlein’s observations about religion are trenchant and ahead of their time, but his sexual politics are all backwards. I mean, how can I swallow a discourse on agnosticism when it’s delivered by a character who keeps threatening women with spankings?”  
  
Bertolt gave a soft chuckle. “Yeah, I picked up on that, too.” He really had, but he knew she probably just thought he was saying so to agree with her. Better add an original thought. “What I always wonder is why is it that all these early science fiction writers assumed we’d have interplanetary travel and hovercars but couldn’t predict iPads? Seriously, the computers in these stories make the Apple Lisa look advanced and yet characters casually jet off to Mars and beyond.”  
  
“Nerds,” Reiner said, smiling as he shook his head.  
  
“It’s not like I am some sort of sci-fi geek,” Bertolt said. “I just like books is all. By the way, if you want to borrow anything else, Annie, just say the word.” He wanted her to say the word, whatever the word was. He wanted to loan her all of his books and talk to her about them for hours.  
  
“Thanks for the offer, Bertl, but I’m covered for now,” she said.  
  
“A new book?” Bertolt asked.  
  
“No, it’s an old one,” she said. “You’ve never read it, though. I’m quite sure.”  
  
The car turned a corner and Reiner’s amber eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. “I dunno, Annie, Bertolt has read an epic fuck-ton of books.”  
  
“Not this one,” Annie said before Bertolt even had a chance to explain that the actual number was definitely less than an epic fuck-ton, however much that was. She reached into her backpack once again and this time pulled out a small leather-bound book, the kind with a flap that snaps it closed. She dangled it in front of her like something enticing, though her face was neutral.  
  
“What is it?” Reiner asked. “Describe it to me, Bertolt. I’ve got to keep my eyes the road.”  
  
“Looks like a journal,” Bertolt said. He turned back to Annie and asked her in a semi-private tone, “Is that what it is?”  
  
“It is,” she said, loud enough that Reiner was clearly included in the intended audience. Actually, her answer seemed to be directed entirely towards her brother and Bertolt was just caught in the middle. “I hold in my hand the journal of one Vanessa Braun.”  
  
With a squeal of traction and a funk of burnt rubber, the Toyota ground to a halt and Bertolt was shoved into the biting embrace of his seatbelt. Reiner twisted in his seat and addressed his sister with bewildering urgency. “You found Mom’s journal? When? Where?”  
  
Annie, who had maintained her phlegmatic demeanor throughout the entire ride, up to and including the screeching stop, blinked at him impassively. “Remember last week when we took those boxes of Dad’s stuff to the storage locker? While you were rooting through your old toys, I was looking in the way back, at the really old stuff. That’s when and where.”  
  
“Hand it over,” said Reiner. “Let me see.”  
  
“You can read it when I’m done with it,” Annie replied, calmly returning the journal to her backpack. “Just to let you know, though, the time period covered is before you happened.” There was a delicacy in the way she spoke this line, a tonal shift as thin as a blade, more felt than heard. If Bertolt didn’t know her as well as he did, or didn’t know the things they both knew about Reiner, he wouldn’t have even noticed.  
  
Goaded by a cacophony of car horns, Reiner resumed driving. “Okay, sis,” he said, eyes back on the road. “Take your time with it. I won’t rush you.” In less than a second, he’d gone from riled to blasé, as if his initial outburst hadn’t occurred at all. But this was not a new pattern of behavior. As fervently as he denied having any interest in the identity of his biological father, every now and then Reiner would slip up and expose a flickering glimpse of his true feelings. Bertolt and Annie never tried to coax him into talking about it, though sometimes Bertolt got a niggling feeling that they should. It was the other part of the trio’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.  
  
“So, Annie, why are you interested in reading your mom’s journal?” Bertolt asked, being careful not to emphasis the word ‘you’ and thus imply—the truth—that it was obvious why Reiner would be interested.  
  
Annie sighed. “I just want to understand her. I’ve never been able to grok that woman. Her motives and what makes her tick and such. And how she could go from being married to a guy like Dad to dating a guy like _Roger_.” She infused the name with utter loathing and grimaced as she said it, the first blatant display of emotion she’d made all morning.  
  
“Because he’s a doctor,” Reiner answered, almost matching Annie’s level of disdain. “Only reason I can think of. Then again, I do not understand woman.”  
  
“And you probably never will,” Annie said. “Understand women, that is. But I can’t disagree with you about Roger. It’s got to be the money, though, not the prestige. I mean, he’s not even a cool kind of doctor like a cardio-thoracic surgeon or a pediatric oncologist. He’s a fucking podiatrist, scraping toe jam and shaving down bunions for a living. He just buys Mom a bunch of stuff and tries to win us over the same way. It’s desperate and gross. Ugh. And all that nasty cologne he wears and the creepy sweet talk. Disgusting.”  
  
“Amen,” said Reiner.  
  
Bertolt agreed with a weak nasal sound. “Nnn.”  
  
The widowed Mrs. Leonhart had started dating Roger Bailey the podiatrist in late September and by October First the teens had formed fervidly negative opinions of him. Disparaging Roger had since become a common feature of their private conversations. Bertolt adopted a passive role, listening to the siblings’ invectives and contributing his opinions only when directly asked for them. Being technically non-family, he wasn’t exposed to the man quite as often as Reiner and Annie, but almost. He saw enough to have his own feelings about Roger, but he didn’t feel like it was his place to broadcast them.  
  
In truth, Bertolt _hated_ Roger, and not in casual way. It was a way-deep-down-in-the-guts sort of hatred, with a foundation that spanned the layers of his consciousness. Yes, he hated the miasma of foul cologne that occupied a two-meter radius surrounding the man. He hated the unctuous way he tried to bribe of his girlfriend’s children into liking him and disguised it as generosity. He hated the honeyed but surreptitiously belittling words he poured into Mrs. Leonhart’s ears. Most of all, though, Bertolt hated the way Roger looked at Annie. Those ice-pale eyes never lingered on her face but stayed far too long on other areas. They were the eyes of a predator—a leopard, a wolf, a shark, a venomous snake, Frank Hoover—and they touched a primal fear inside Bertolt.  
  
But there was no actual evidence of Roger attempting anything inappropriate with Annie, besides furtive leering and the occasional utterance of vile pet names like “darling” and “baby.” Annie stiffened and looked piqued whenever he used such endearments, but she endured them, only venting her disgust later when it was just the three of them. If the man ever laid a finger on her she would not keep quiet about it, that was for sure. All Roger was guilty of was looking at Annie with those eyes—those voracious, predatory eyes—but that was enough to make Bertolt want to hurt him physically, want to pummel his flesh until it was mottled blue and burgundy.  
  
Knowing that about himself terrified Bertolt more than anything.  
  
“Let’s talk about something less odious,” he suggested, though they’d almost reached Angel Altonen High School. “Annie, have you decided where you want to go for your big birthday dinner?”  
  
“Don’t call it that,” Annie replied. “It’s not like it’s a celebration or anything. It’s just a dinner. But, since you guys are going to make me choose, I want Thai.” Though she tried to act like she only made the decision under coercion, her complete lack of hesitation indicated that she’d already put some thought into it and did in fact care.  
  
Reiner raised an eyebrow and smirked. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your most recent triumph, would it?”  
  
“No,” she said coolly. “I just like Thai food.”  
  
“I still haven’t seen your new trophy,” said Bertolt. “Exactly how big is it?”  
  
“It doesn’t even fit on the shelf,” Reiner answered as proudly as if he’d won it himself. “She had to set it on the floor.” He boasted because Annie wouldn’t—it wasn’t her style.  
  
Bertolt wanted to see the new trophy, of course, but he wished he could have witnessed the thrilling bouts she’d fought to earn it, along with the title of State Champion in Youth Muay Thai Women’s Division. He’d had to work a nine-hour shift at the sandwich shop that day, like most Saturdays. In a typical week, he also worked four hours in the evenings of at least four out of five days Mon through Fri. Getting schoolwork done wasn’t a problem since he had a free period this year, and exhaustion was an old friend who had never been far away. Sacrificing his time with Annie and Reiner, however, missing her tournaments and his football games, was a brutalizing deficit. But he needed a car of his own, and in just a little more than a year he would need a place to live and that meant rent, so he had better to get used to working.  
  
For now, he still got to see Reiner and Annie every day, which was not guaranteed for the future. He had to cherish every minute with them.  
  
“Did you tell him _your_ news, Reiner?” Annie asked coyly.  
  
“Uhhh...” Reiner’s mouth twisted into a strained smile and stayed that way, unspeaking, until he finished parallel parking the car. “Well...” He hesitated.  
  
A feeling of dread rose in Bertolt’s stomach like icy water—Annie hadn’t specified that it was _good_ news, and if it had been, Reiner would have shared it already because boasting _was_ his style. “Is everything okay?” Bertolt asked, touching Reiner’s shoulder with his fingertips.  
  
Reiner closed his eyes and let out a heavy, defeated sigh. “I got accepted to William and Mary.” Pause. “With a rather substantial football scholarship.” Pause.  
  
Bertolt’s featherlight touch turned into a firm but affectionate shove. “You ass,” he said, grinning. “You know you really had me going there, making me think it was something awful. But William and Mary? Really? That’s awesome, Reiner!” It truly was awesome, so awesome that Bertolt felt a dizzying rush of secondhand excitement for his best friend. Stitched into the joy, though, was a silk-fine filament of bittersweet because their time together was running out. “I’m really happy for you,” he said, and meant it.  
  
Even though the car was parked, the engine turned off, Reiner kept his hands at eleven and one on the steering wheel, which looked as fragile as a chicken’s neck in his burly fists. “Thanks, Bertl, but I don’t know if I’m going to take it.” He aimed his gaze out the windshield as he said this, his expression in profile displaying no trace of enthusiasm.  
  
“What? Why not?” Bertolt asked. “William and Mary is one of the best schools in the state. And you’d get to keep playing football, which you love. I don’t get it, Reiner.”  
  
Reiner’s grip on the wheel tightened, evinced by the whitening of his knuckles. He still wouldn’t turn his head and look Bertolt in the eyes. “There’s more to me than just football, you know. And I don’t want to make major life decisions based on my hobbies as a teenager. The truth is, I don’t know what I want yet. Besides, Williamsburg is so far away.”  
  
“Oh, I see,” Annie muttered but offered no follow-up.  
  
Bertolt, however, did not see whatever it was that she saw. “But it’s a mostly paid for college ride. That’s not an offer most people get.” Tact was paramount here—he didn’t want to sound jealous of Reiner’s opportunities or critical of his declining them.  
  
Reiner released another loud sigh. “I guess I always thought I would take a year off after high school. Work and save some money, you know? And then you and I would start college together, Bertl, at the same school.”  
  
“Mmm-hmm,” hummed Annie, or at least that’s what Bertolt thought he heard.  
  
“Reiner...” he said, and then paused because what he was about to say wasn’t easy, and also because he was surprised by the realization that he hadn’t said it yet already. “I don’t think I’m going to go to college. Not anytime soon, at least. My mom has said, in no uncertain terms, that after I graduate high school I am on my own. And even if she didn’t kick me out, she can’t afford to send me to college and I can’t afford to send myself.” He said all of this on one deep breath to get it out more quickly. There it was, the shameful truth.  
  
“Shit, Bertl...” Reiner said. But that was all he said.  
  
Bertolt’s eyes darted to Annie, who looked rigid and uncomfortable in the backseat. She already knew, of course. Ever incisive, Annie would certainly have deduced by now that Bertolt was not bound for higher education—his was a humbler, more arduous track to adulthood.  
  
“You’ve got time to think before giving them an answer,” Bertolt said, aiming to break the tension. “You may even get a better offer.” It was certainly possible—Reiner had excellent grades, was an incredible athlete, was blond and handsome and charming, and was pretty much everything that Bertolt wished to be. Any college would be lucky to have him matriculate.  
  
The air inside the car felt thin and weak—too many exhalations, too much carbon dioxide.  
  
“Isn’t it about time for you to start applying for scholarships?” Reiner asked, voice light, but with obvious effort to keep it aloft.  
  
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Bertolt answered. His thoughts were such a jumble that he couldn’t tell if he was humoring Reiner or being sincere. His grades were good but not _scholarship_ good. Was it even worth his time to try applying for aid when anything short of a full ride was out of his price range?  
  
Having reached a tenuous peace, the trio opened their doors, almost in perfect unison. Bertolt hoped that all discussion of college and scholarships would stay shelved for the rest of the day and had reason to believe it might—his intuition told him that Reiner was still preoccupied with thoughts of his mother’s journal and the college talk was, to some extent, a sublimation of that anxiety. If only he knew the right words to say to Reiner to get him to open up. Then again, it would be pretty damn hypocritical for him to encourage Reiner to share his innermost feelings when there were still things that Bertolt was hiding.  
  
The three of them picked their way across the parking lot without speaking. The morning was awash in the primaveral brilliance from an Alice blue sky. The narrow stripes of dirt that limned the footpaths around the school had been transformed over the past week into beds of life, shooting up tender green stalks that would soon become flowers. Birds trilled out their mating songs into the cool air—the tunes varied by species, but the lyrics were essentially the same: _“Notice me! Notice me! Notice me! Notice me!”_  
  
Bertolt thought it might be nice to be a bird.  
  
In the locker-lined hallways of the school, he always felt conspicuous and his first instinct was to slouch, to make himself smaller, to slink along the periphery and slip inside shadows and be as unobtrusive as possible. But Reiner wouldn’t allow that. He kept his best friend at his side with herding shoulder slaps and dragged him into conversations that Bertolt had no business being a part of with friends from the popular senior set. It was unclear if Reiner was oblivious or merely indifferent to the discrepancy in their social standings, but either way, Bertolt couldn’t feel annoyed with him—to Reiner, he was just as worthy of friendship as anyone else and that was a treasure.  
  
Today, invigorated perhaps by the fecund atmosphere of new Spring, everyone was in high spirits. The most popular topic of conversation was Spring Break, which was still almost a month away. Bertolt would spend his working, of course, as many extra hours as his supervisor would allow, but since he was saving up for a car, it fell into the range of typical teenage life and was not an exclusive to poverty.  
  
“Hey, I’m going to head for class,” said Annie. “I’ll see you guys back at the car.”  
  
“See you,” Bertolt said, resisting the urge to once again wish her a Happy Birthday.  
  
As she walked away, eyes turned from both sides of the hallway to watch her go, but nobody approached or dared to speak to her. There was a lot of talk around the school about Annie Leonhart—enough that students in all four grades knew the name. She was an awesome and fearful presence, the Ice Queen of Angel Altonen High, beautiful and aloof. Many of the rumors were stupid, like that she’d put a boy in a coma for asking her out in middle school. Others were just plain cruel, like that she was a hermaphrodite and her standoffish nature was due to a surplus of testosterone. She had no shortage of fervent admirers—especially, though not exclusively, male—but she kept them all at arms length, which only made them love her more. Since starting high school less than two years ago she’d received over a dozen confessions of romantic feelings and had soundly rejected every single one.  
  
Eventually, inevitably, she would say yes to someone, it was just a matter of when. Bertolt, with loathsome  acknowledgement of his selfishness, hoped it wouldn’t happen until after she’d gone away to college.  
  
—  
  
The rest of the day passed in pleasant normalcy. The events of the morning commute weren’t brought up again and faded into obscurity. Bertolt focused his thoughts, with laser precision, on Annie’s birthday dinner and the present he’d bought for her. By the time school was over and he was back in his apartment about to get ready, his level of excitement was so high it was embarrassing, even to himself. It was just Annie's birthday.

To his surprise, Ma was home, sitting on the couch where he’d left her with a cigarette in one hand and an old-fashioned glass of something amber on the rocks in the other. She fixed him with a look of dull contempt.  
  
“Hey Ma,” he said. “I’m just going to take a shower before I go out with Annie and Reiner. It’s Annie’s birthday today. I think I told you about it this morning.”  
  
“C’mere boy,” she told him. Her voice was well liquored—she’d probably been drinking steadily all day.  
  
He did as she commanded, stepping into the tobacco cloud around her, and asked, “What is it, Ma?”  
  
Her eyes narrowed to slivers and deltas of crows feet blossomed at their corners. When she spoke, it was a low, husky growl. “You’re pathetic, boy. You know that, right?” She paused, as if waiting for him to agree, but continued even when he didn’t. “You might think that hanging out with those pretty blond kids next door makes you better’n me, but you aren’t. Don’t you ever forget that you are trash, Bertie, just like me. And you always will be.”  
  
This was nothing new to Bertolt’s ears. His mother was very generous with these kinds of sentiments. He sighed, which was his usual response. “I don’t think I’m better than you, Ma. Now I’ve got to take a shower.” As he turned to walk away, her cold, leathery hand shot out and cuffed his wrist. The glowing butt of her cigarette, still pinched between two fingers, was alarmingly close to his bare skin.  
  
“I’m not done with you,” she rasped. “You know what I hate most about you, Bertolt Hoover? That you never even try to put up a fight. With me or anyone else. You are a spineless little pigshit.”  
  
Bertolt tasted an acrid squirt of bile in his esophagus and had to swallow it back down. His captive hand trembled with the effort it took not to wrest it violently from her grip. Over the years, he’d become an expert at forgiving her, excusing her, ignoring her, but it never became easy. Did she really not realize how hurtful a thing she’d said? Was she that drunk? Or was she that cruel? In a voice so quiet it was barely there, he asked, “Do you really wish I was more like _him?_ Because I don’t.”  
  
Ma’s hand went slack and fell from his wrist. She finished her drink in a long sip and said nothing more. Bertolt went to take his shower.  
  
The exchange with Ma had jangled him. Beneath the feeble jet of tepid water he considered whether he should have a nip of something before he left, just to calm his nerves. Probably a bad idea. But maybe he would.  
  
He looked at his bare, wet skin and saw a roadmap of lies. There was the scar on his left forearm where the pins had gone in to hold the bones together. _“I fell out of a tree,”_ he’d told the doctor. The little round scars on the backs of his hands, each one the same circumference as the end of a cigarette. _“Those are from chicken pox,”_ he’d told his teacher. He still had a faint silver trace of the cut above his eyebrow from the day he’d met Annie and Reiner. _“I broke a glass,”_ he’d told Mrs. Leonhart.  
  
And then there was that other scar. It had two parts, a perforated v-shape marring the top of his right arm and its mirror image marring the bottom, but from a different angle they formed a large diamond and the scar in its entirety was obviously a dog bite. Bertolt remembered getting every single one of his scars, but this one was the only memory that wasn’t completely awful.  
  
It was another Spring day. He and Reiner were both nine and Annie had just recently turned eight and the three of them were playing in the park after school, supervised by Mr. Leonhart. Mr. Smith’s irascible doberman, Brutus, somehow got away from his owner and bounded straight for the trio. It was not entirely the dog’s fault since Reiner had been teasing him earlier with a leftover slice of bologna from his lunch. But, for whatever reason a dog might have, Brutus targeted Annie and when Bertolt realized this, he barely had time to jump in front of her, thrusting his arm out like a shield. The doberman’s jaws snapped shut like a beartrap on the spindly limb—a doctor would point out later how miraculous it was that there wasn’t a fracture—and two sets of needle-sharp white teeth sank into soft young flesh.  
  
Mr. Leonhart took Bertolt to the emergency room, not wanting to trouble his mother too much. Better to send home a patched up kid than an injured kid. Bertolt had cried, silently, but he hadn't complained, not even when the doctor cleaned the wound with stuff that stung like acid and then followed it up with a tetanus shot. He could still remember the smell of the hospital, all medicine and chemicals. That was far scarier than the actual injury.  
  
The part that remained most pristine and most powerful in Bertolt’s imagination, however, was something that Reiner had said to him when they were still in the waiting room. Mr. Leonhart was talking to the receptionist and Annie was pounding her little fists against the glass of a vending machine in the vain hope of dislodging a Kit-Kat bar. Bertolt sat in a fiberglass chair, clutching a bloodied washcloth to his arm, his whole body shaking, and Reiner sat next to him and patted his knee reassuringly.  
  
“You were really brave back there, Bertl,” he said. “I mean it. You say you’re a coward, but you protected Annie without having to think about it. I think that’s very, very brave.”  
  
“I didn’t want her to get bit,” Bertolt said.  
  
Reiner beamed, one of his luminous white smiles. “And she didn’t, thanks to you.” Then his face turned suddenly serious. “But I shouldn’t have let you get hurt in her place. I’m sorry, Bertolt.”  
  
Bertolt’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Reiner.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Reiner said and sighed. “But I could’ve done better and I will do better in the future. How about we make it an official promise.”  
  
“A promise?”  
  
“If you promise to always protect Annie, then I promise to always protect Bertolt. How does that sound?”  
  
“But who will protect you, Reiner?”  
  
Reiner made a face that suggested he thought this was the most absurd question in the world. “What do I need protection from? So are you in?” His grin had returned and he held up a hooked pinkie finger.  
  
Comprehending the gesture, Bertolt latched his own pinkie with Reiner’s and the arrangement was made official. “I promise to always protect Annie, no matter what,” he said. “But, uh, don’t tell her that ‘cause I think it would make her mad.”  
  
“Ha! Probably. Don’t worry, I won’t tell her. And I promise to always protect you, Bertolt, no matter what.”  
  
The scar from Brutus’ bite was the lasting symbol of that day and that promise. It was a promise that Bertolt would do whatever he could to keep, though in truth no opportunities to act on it had arisen in the last eight years. He wanted one mark on his body that didn’t have a lie behind it.  
  
Scrubbed clean, he emerged from the shower and dressed himself in the least hideous outfit he owned: a pair of black pants, a white button-up shirt, and an Oxford blue v-neck sweater that Reiner had given him for his seventeenth birthday. He combed his wet hair even though he knew it would ruffle up as it dried. Then he went to his closet to retrieve Annie’s present. Having bought it a week ago, he’d kept it hidden inside a shoebox, buried under two musty old blankets in the corner of his closet. It wasn’t likely Ma would rummage through his things, but he didn’t want to risk her finding it and then asking him a barrage of nasty questions about it. _“How could you afford this? Why would you buy something like this for a girl you aren’t even fucking? What happened to saving for a car?”_  
  
Bertolt had withdrawn a couple hundred dollars from his car fund and bought Annie a Pandora charm bracelet from the gleaming white boutique at the good mall. He could only afford to buy her three charms, so he’d been very thoughtful in his selection, finally settling on one Murano glass bead in grape violet, an intricate celtic knot, and a tiny prancing unicorn with a horn made of gold. It was far more girly and far more expensive than anything he’d ever given Annie before and he was giddy and anxious in equal parts over giving it to her.  
  
Annie Leonhart was attractive in a way that made Bertolt’s chest ache if he looked at her for too long, yet he found himself staring at her every chance he got. Her face was interesting more than it was conventionally beautiful—the Brancusi-esque swoop of her nose, the way her eyelashes cast shadows on the high planes of her pale cheeks. Bertolt could think he had it perfectly mapped out in his imagination and then he’d see her in a new setting where the sunlight hit her at a different angle and it was like he was seeing her for the first time again.  
  
He couldn’t tell her that he loved her. The kids at school compared her to ice, but to Bertolt she was more like Vonnegut’s Ice-Nine—she had the power to destroy his world utterly in an instant if he touched her. Maybe the bracelet would give her an idea of how he felt without him having to actually say it.  
  
With gift bag in hand, he left his bedroom. Ma was gone now, her empty glass and full cereal bowl ashtray the only evidence she’d been here at all today. Bertolt stopped in the kitchen and swigged the last mouthful of bourbon from the bottle, wincing as it scorched the back of his tongue, and then headed over to the Leonhart’s apartment.  
  
Annie opened the door for him. “Come on in, Bertl. Reiner just got in the shower and I want to change my clothes before we go, so it will be a few minutes. Might as well make yourself at home—you know how Reiner is with his showers.” Her gaze made only a brief pause on the gift bag as he stepped inside the apartment. “You know you didn’t have to get me anything.”  
  
“I know, but I...” Bertolt’s tongue had gone rubbery in his mouth.  
  
“You can give it to me later,” Annie said, with just a hint of a smile. “Thank you, Bertolt.”  
  
He walked to the couch and sat down. The television was on and showing an old episode of Law  & Order: Special Victims Unit, but the volume was turned way down so it played out like a silent film. Reiner’s shower was white noise coming through the wall. “Your mom working late again?” Bertolt asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Annie answered. “She’s a full-fledged lawyer now so I guess that comes with the territory. I don’t mind, to be honest. I like being by myself. You can change the channel, by the way. And turn up the volume. I’m going to go change. Oh, but that’s right, you wanted to see the trophy.” She disappeared into her bedroom and returned towing a three-tiered construction of lacquered wood and gold-colored metal. Set on the floor, it came up past her waist—it had to be over a meter tall.  
  
“Wow,” said Bertolt. “Reiner wasn’t exaggerating, that thing’s colossal. Congratulations, Annie.”  
  
She shrugged. “You know I don’t do it for the trophies, but I’ll let you keep gawking at it while I get ready. Be out in a few.”  
  
The door to her bedroom clicked shut while Bertolt was still examining the details of her trophy, from the plate on the base neatly engraved with her name to the little warrior on top with fists held aloft. It really was the coolest trophy he’d ever seen. Annie was amazing.  
  
There was a telltale grinding sound of metal on metal at the front door, Mrs. Leonhart’s key turning in the lock. “Hello Mrs. L,” Bertolt said. Then he lifted his eyes and froze because it wasn’t her. “Mr. Bailey...” Was it okay to call him that or did the guy expect to be addressed as _Dr._ Bailey?  
  
“Hey there, sport,” Roger greeted with a slippery smile. “You’re the friend from next door. Bernard, right?”  
  
“It’s Bertolt, actually.” He felt cornered, caught off guard and trapped alone with a man who made him profoundly uncomfortable. “Mrs. Leonhart isn’t home from work.”  
  
“That’s okay,” said Roger. “I can stand to wait. And please, call me Roger. Vanessa seems to consider you a part of her family, so that makes you a part of mine, too.”  
  
Bertolt shuddered.  
  
Roger was a tall man, not as tall as Bertolt, but he exuded a sort of perfidious self-assurance that made his presence larger, more threatening. His salt and pepper hair was combed back and oiled with product and that noxious cologne scent hung on him like a mantle. He was dressed well, in tailored slacks and a sport jacket, and wore a very deliberate crop of stubble on his jawline. His eyes were as cold and colorless as ice chips.  
  
“So, uh, did you see Annie’s new trophy?” asked Bertolt just to kill the awkward silence.  
  
“Another fighting trophy, I assume,” said Roger with a cluck of his tongue. “She’s a regular little Xena, that one. It’s a shame, really. With that petite little body, she could be a cheerleader. She’s pretty enough, just needs to smile more.”  
  
Bertolt had an urge to ask Roger why he presumed that cheerleading was any better than martial arts, but he held his tongue because he didn’t really want to engage this man in a lengthy chat. Hopefully Reiner and Annie would be ready soon and they could all leave. The sound of the shower cut off but it was Annie who emerged first, now clad in a dove gray tunic top and dark skinny jeans.  
  
“I thought I heard your voice,” she said, her tone loaded with unconcealed dislike. “Look, Vanessa’s not here. She won’t be home for another two hours so you should leave and come back later.”  
  
Roger chuckled and shook his head in a patronizing fashion. He spoke to her as if she were a toddler or a puppy. “Such a moody little lady. Do you hate me so much that you won’t keep me company for two short hours? That’s not very nice of you, especially after I bought you so many lovely new clothes for your birthday.”  
  
Annie kept her composure. “I hate to disappoint you,” she said, which was obviously not true, “but me and Reiner and Bertolt are going out in like three minutes, so if you wait here, it will be alone.”  
  
“Going out for your birthday?” Roger asked. His legs operated smoothly, drawing him closer to Annie in one fluid motion. “How fun. You’re dressed rather plain, though, doll baby. Why don’t you wear one of the new dresses I got you? You would look so pretty in a dress.”  
  
All the hairs on Bertolt’s arms stood on end, prickling in fear. He watched Roger’s eyes—those ravenous, bestial eyes—as they crawled along Annie’s neck, chest, stomach, thighs.  
  
“I prefer my own clothes,” Annie said crisply.  
  
And that’s when Roger made his move. He reached out hand and brushed a wisp of blond hair from her cheek, knuckles brushing slowly over her skin as he said, “Well you should at least smile, darling. You could be so beautiful.”  
  
Annie smacked his hand away with such force that his arm swung. “Don’t fucking touch me!”  
  
“Now calm down,” Roger said. His voice had lost its playful edge and was heavy now, impatient and backed by deep breaths. He put his hand on Annie’s shoulder in a calming gesture and this time she aimed for his face, scoring a direct blow to the chin that sent him reeling backwards.  
  
“You haughty little bitch!” he snarled, lunging forward and landing a slap to her face so hard it made a cracking sound.  
  
It could just as well have been the sound of Bertolt’s self-control snapping. His body moved before his brain consciously told it to and he felt the backs of his fingers connect with the jut of Roger’s nose before he realized he had made a fist. Roger staggered, eyes wide with fury, one hand cupping his nose as blood seeped out between his fingers.  
  
“Holy shit, Bertl,” Annie muttered.  
  
But Bertolt wasn’t done with this asshole yet. In full possession of his height for once, he glared down at Roger. “She said don’t touch her and you fucking touched her! What the hell is wrong with you?” His voice was somebody else’s, a preacher’s or warlord’s.  
  
“Wrong with _me?_ ” Roger roared, his lips curling back to reveal teeth outlined in blood. “You broke my nose for touching a girl on the shoulder, you little sociopath!”  
  
“She told you to stop,” Bertolt stated through clenched teeth.  
  
“I wasn’t hurting her,” Roger said. He was practically hissing now. “Maybe if she’d let people touch her once in a while she wouldn’t come off as such a frosty, frigid _cunt!_ ”  
  
Red and gold exploded like fireworks behind Bertolt’s eyes. He heard the hard, packing sounds of his fists on Roger’s face like a tenderizer against a slab of raw meat. His body was a machine, a juggernaut of heavy equipment, steel parts relentlessly churning and whirring as his engine roared and exhaled smoke. Roger fought back, naturally, but Bertolt absorbed his blows without feeling them.  
  
And then strong arms were holding of him from behind, but not roughly, and a warm, steady voice spoke in his ear. “Calm down, Bertolt.” It was his sense of reason, returned to him. No. It was Reiner. Reiner’s voice was reaching out to him, pulling him back from the brink.  
  
Bertolt sagged into Reiner’s embrace as the conflagration inside him died down. His vision cleared and he saw Roger in front of him. He hadn’t done too much damage—one of Roger’s eyes was starting to swell and there were twin trickles of blood running between his nostrils and his mouth, but otherwise he looked fine. Now Bertolt felt the first twinges of his own injuries, a split lip, a bruised cheekbone, nothing too serious.  
  
“What the hell happened?” Reiner asked.  
  
Roger glowered nastily. “Your white trash friend here attacked me like a barbarian, that’s what happened!” He aimed his glare at Bertolt next. “I’ll see that you’re tried as an adult for this. Good luck getting a job at Wal-Mart once you’ve got a criminal record of assault.” Then he turned to Annie. “And you, I bet you wish you’d accepted a touch on the cheek now, bitch.”  
  
Bertolt had one good punch left in him and he loosed it like a bolt from a crossbow, a clean, strong uppercut that caught Roger Bailey under his jaw.  
  
In reality, the effects of this final blow played out in a matter of seconds, but inside Bertolt’s head, those seconds stretched out like taffy and he witnessed everything that happened next as if it were in slow-motion. What happened was as follows: Roger reeled back, his head spun and his body twisted, his feet fumbled against one another and he fell towards the floor face-first, but something stopped his momentum before he hit the carpet. It was Annie’s muay thai trophy—Roger was impaled on it.  
  
Time snapped back to its usual pace as the last wet rasp of breath left Roger’s lungs. It might not have even been a voluntary action but a reflex of his body shutting down. He hadn’t flailed or struggled so it must have been a quick death, a pierced heart. But he was definitely dead. The body sagged down around the trophy, which had remarkably not broken or toppled. A very quiet _plip plip plip_ of blood (from the body) dripping onto blood (pooled on the carpet) was audible in the ensuing silence. The scene felt unreal, like looking at a still from a movie.  
  
But it was real. Oh god it was real.  
  
The gravity of the situation slammed into Bertolt like a bullet train. His jaw fell open and words came out in soft croaks. “I... just killed a man...”  
  
Reiner was still holding him, but not too tightly for him to wrench away and make a dash for the bathroom. Bertolt barely made it in time to release the contents of his stomach into the toilet. He hadn’t eaten in hours so all that came up was a caustic slime of bourbon and bile and when he ran out of that he dry heaved.  
  
“Bertolt, are you okay?” Reiner’s voice sounded distant, like it was passing through water, even though Bertolt could sense that he was standing nearby. “Can I come in?”  
  
Bertolt stayed silent, clinging to the porcelain bowl as his whole body shivered uncontrollably. Reiner had asked permission to enter, like he was scared of his best friend. Bertolt was scared of himself. He was a monster.  
  
After a minute with no response, Reiner came in anyways and with gentle hands helped Bertolt to stand. Bertolt’s limbs felt as if they were made from clay, heavy and nerveless—a golem’s body—but he managed to get his hands in the sink and turn on the faucet. He washed his hands clean and then used them to cup water into his mouth and rinse out the sour taste of vomit. As soon as he’d done that, Annie appeared in the doorway holding a glass of water.  
  
“You need to sit down, Bertolt,” she said, remarkably calm after all that had happened. “Or lay down. You can use my bed. Then we can decide what to do next.”  
  
Another bullet train hit him from the opposite track. What _was_ he going to do next? His life as he knew it—lowly and insignificant as it was, it was still his—was over. An assault record would have ruined him sufficiently, but this... this was manslaughter. He could be sent to jail for several years over this. A man was dead because of him, and even if it wasn’t a man that he had any warm feelings for and didn’t necessarily regret hitting, Roger Bailey didn’t deserve to die for being a creep. And, oh god, there would be a trial, and people would talk to his Ma about his childhood, they’d snoop around and learn things. He could just imagine the things that would be said in that courtroom: _“It’s in his blood,”_ and, _“He’s just like his father.”_  
  
One thing he was certain of, though, and as Reiner and Annie guided him to her bedroom he unstuck the words from his tongue. “Not we. Me. You two can’t get in trouble for this. It’s all on me.” He sank onto Annie’s bed, sat but didn’t lay down, and looked at the two faces in front of him. Both were wan and perturbed.  
  
“We’re in this together,” Reiner said in a tone that left little room for argument. “Your problems are my problems. This was an accident, Bertolt. Annie and I were witnesses and we will testify to that.”   
  
Just the word testify was enough to trigger a fresh wave of terror inside Bertolt. “Accident or not I _killed_ somebody! No! There can’t be a trial! I won’t put you through that! I can’t face it! I can’t. I can’t. I can’t...” His speech spiked erratic and then dissolved into muttering.  
  
Annie reached out to him, took both of his hands in both of hers, small and cold and dry against his feverish skin. She was touching him but he couldn’t take any pleasure in it under these circumstances. Her eyes found his and held them steadily. “What do you want to do, Bertolt?”  
  
The question took him by surprise. It held no judgment, no presumption. She hadn’t even offered her own suggested course of action first, she deferred to him from the start. In that moment a strange sense of calm and clarity suffused him and he knew exactly what he had to do. “I’m going to run away,” he said with no inflection.  
  
“What?” Reiner barked, shouldering Annie out of the way to get in Bertolt’s face. “Run away? To where? And how will you get there without a car?”  
  
“I’ll hitchhike,” Bertolt said. The answer came to him surprisingly quickly considering that he hadn’t really thought about it, but that really was the only way he could travel.  
  
Reiner folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. Out of the question.”  
  
“You can’t stop me,” said Bertolt. “Unless you catch me and turn me in, that is.” His empty, inflamed stomach tossed. Was he being manipulative? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t believe they would turn him. “I mean, you’ll have to talk to the police, of course. But by then I will be gone, hopefully far away.”  
  
“Okay that’s enough!” Reiner growled as he seized Bertolt’s shoulders and shook him. “Stop talking this bullshit, Bertolt! You are not going to hitchhike and I am not going to play a role in setting the cops on your trail. If you're running away, I’m going with you. We’ll take my car.”  
  
Definitely not what Bertolt had in mind. “No! That’s crazy! Reiner, you’re crazy! You’ve got two months left of high school before you graduate and then you’re going to college! You can’t run away! I won’t let you throw your life away for my sake!”  
  
A look of fierce determination lit Reiner’s features and he appeared, for a brief moment, like a marble demigod in a statuary. “Just try and stop me.”  
  
“I...” Bertolt worked his jaw, but no sound came out after that. There were no words. He felt wet on his cheeks. Tears. He hadn’t even noticed when he’d started crying.  
  
Reiner petted the top of his head, smiled gently. “I promised you, Bertolt. Remember?”  
  
There was a moment filled with no sound except the soft breaths from three pairs of lungs. Then Annie spoke. “Well, I guess we’d better start packing.”  
  
“We?” Reiner asked. “You’re not coming, Annie.”  
  
“Like hell I’m not!” she said. “You said it yourself, bro, we’re in this together. Besides, if you two leave me behind then I’m the one who has to talk to the cops, and worse, Mom. No, thank you. I’ll take my chances as a teenage runaway.”  
  
Bertolt’s emotions warred inside him. That his two most beloved people were willing to give up everything—dropping out of school, leaving behind their mother and all their other friends—just for him was enough to make him silently weep. That they were actually going to go through with it filled him with shame and dread and self-loathing. Because deep down in the roots of him, in his vital organs and his bone marrow, he didn’t want to be alone and he didn’t want to hitchhike. He couldn’t stay. That was never an option. But he needed them. Bertolt needed Reiner and Annie as much as water and oxygen.  
  
“Let’s meet in the hallway in ten minutes,” he said.  
  
As he left the Leonhart apartment for the last time, he had to walk past the still body of the man he had slain. The weight of him had forced the trophy deeper into his chest until the top of the little gold fighter had burst through his back and tented his sport jacket. Below the body was a dark red continent of blood. Bertolt felt the harsh spasm of dry heaves again when he saw, but fought back against the panic.  
  
Before he exited, he grabbed Annie’s birthday present from the coffee table where he’d left it.  
  
Back in the Hoover apartment, Bertolt commenced packing in a fugue state. Every detail of his surroundings was saturated and hyper-vivid, like an overexposed photograph. All of it—amoeba-shaped tar stains on the peeling wallpaper, the desiccated corpse of a neglected fern spilling tentacle-like from its planter, sink full of dirty dishes he'd planned on washing tonight, Ma’s empty glass and full ashtray—belonged to a life that was no longer his. Could whatever was out there for him really be more miserable than this tableau of desolation?  
  
He didn’t have any idea what he needed to pack for running away. He found an old duffle bag in his closet that he used to take to summer camp when he was little. Into it he stuffed all of the clothes he had that still fit him, wadded up. He put his toothbrush and toothpaste in a ziplock bag and grabbed just a few of his favorite books: _Cat’s Craddle, Brideshead Revisited, The Secret History_. Annie’s present went in the duffle, too, though he couldn’t imagine he would ever be able to give it to her now. Maybe he could sell it. The last thing he added was an unopened bottle of gin from Ma’s stash.  
  
 _That should do it_ , he thought. There was the question of whether to leave Ma a note and he wasted two of his remaining minutes debating it, ultimately choosing not to.  
  
Still four minutes left. He could leave now, take the stairs, slink away down the dark path behind the building. Four minutes wasn’t much of a lead, but he knew how to move undetected, he could evade them, leave them to a better life without him. Yes. That’s what he’d do. What he now realized he _had_ to do. He was a fool to ever think he could keep Reiner and Annie.

The idea was set in his mind, but when he left the apartment with his duffle and school bags, they were already waiting for him in the hall.

“Bertl,” Reiner said with a sober nod, then echoed what he’d said when they’d met in the same spot that morning to go to school together. “Shall we get this show on the road?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bertolt said.  
  
They loaded up the blue Toyota with their bags containing all the objects from their old lives that they would carry with them into the new. No more words were exchanged. There was about an hour and a half left before Mrs. Leonhart would arrive home and make the most horrific discovery of her life. She really got a shit deal out of this—already lost her husband and now her lover and her two children with no explanation provided.  
  
Bertolt hated himself.  
  
After stopping at an ATM to cash out their bank accounts, and filling the Toyota’s gas tank, they drove North and didn’t stop until they were well past Baltimore. Annie’s big birthday dinner consisted greasy fast food hamburgers and stale french fries eaten under the grainy light of a street lamp in an empty parking lot.  
  
“Is it okay if I give you your present?” Reiner asked.  
  
Annie looked dazed. “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t even know you’d bought me one.”  
  
Reiner grinned—how could he still grin?—and said, “I didn’t buy it.” He turned in his seat and stretched to retrieve a lumpen bundle, wrapped up in purple tissue paper, from one of his bags. He handed it Annie. “It wasn’t _my_ toys I was rooting through in the storage locker.”  
  
Annie was already tearing into the package as he said this and when the contents were revealed she emitted a tiny squeak. “Luna. I thought I’d lost her.”  
  
“Can you believe she was in there?” Reiner asked.  
  
But Annie was speechless, clutching the tattered creature that was no longer recognizably lupine to her chest like a little kid. Like the six-year old she’d been when Bertolt first met her. “Thank you, Reiner,” she finally said.  
  
“It was nothing” Reiner said. "What about your present, Bertolt?"  
  
Bertolt’s heart shriveled in his chest. “I forgot to bring it,” he lied. Like he could give her a bracelet after he’d ruined her life.  
  
“That’s okay,” said Annie. “I don’t need anything.”  
  
After that, she and Bertolt took turns slugging from the bottle of gin until Reiner said they should get back on the road. The alcohol and junk food made Bertolt feel docile and logy, so he shut his eyes and let himself drift.  
  
When the jolt came, Reiner was still driving. Annie was asleep in the backseat with Luna tucked under her chin. The radio was playing so low it could barely be heard, but Bertolt vaguely recognized the song from those Throwback Thursdays.  
  
 _Runaway train, never going back_ ;  
 _Wrong way on a one-way track_ ;  
 _Seems like I should be getting somewhere_ ;  
 _Somehow I'm neither here nor there._  
  
“Are you okay, Bertolt?” Reiner asked in a whisper.  
  
Bertolt meant to say yes but said the truth instead. “No.”  
  
Reiner didn’t say anything, just took one hand off the wheel and squeezed Bertolt’s fingers tightly as he kept on driving through the night.

**Author's Note:**

> And there is where the "Runners" part of the series title comes from. Each of the first 3 parts focuses on one pivotal day in the life of one of the trio. What comes next will be more location based and finally feature a more expanded cast. But I may take a little break to work on something else.


End file.
